Rookie Representative Giovanni Capriglione and a Democrat ally have caused a stir. With good reason. Keep up the good work. Texas needs cleaning up so that you can say Texas and ethics in the same sentence and everyone won't die laughing.
It’s easy to think of a political group — the Legislature, the city council, the school board, the utility district — as inherently corrupt. Sometimes, they do their best to prove it. That is not really the problem here. The problem is that under the current ethics laws, it’s very hard to prove the opposite. It can be difficult to tell an honest lawmaker from a lawmaker who is on the make.
Start, if you can, with the assumption that most people in public office are honest and are serving with the best of intentions, even if you disagree with their politics. Assume they are reasonably intelligent. And think about what happens when you give intelligent people a set of rules. Over time, they figure out the best way to read the rules, to stay within the law while also taking every legal advantage.
Over time, things get out of balance. It might be that most people are following the laws on the books, but that the everyday level of questionable behavior is out of hand.
Read the entire New York Times article here.
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